Inconsistency with targeting of on-board artillery

[Mad Mike]

I have found a small inconsistency regarding the targeting of on-board artillery assets .. it might even be a bug.

Following scenario (in WEGO):

My on-board 60mm mortar has a "target light" area fire command, which it executed during the previous turn.

In the current command phase, I selected an HQ to give this mortar a "Line" target via the artillery support request interface. After giving the mortar this new target, I realised that it still had the "target light" command active.

Naturally, I selected "Clear Target" for this mortar.

This cancelled the previous "Target light" command (as expected), but it also had the effect of "Cease Fire" in the support request interface. The second effect was quite unexpected and I'm wondering if this is the intended behaviour or a bug.

Basically, I've wasted one minute now which I have to wait for the mortar to become available again for indirect fire missions via the support request interface (no big deal, but inconvenient).

Also, I am wondering what would have happened if I hadn't cancelled via "Clear Target"? Would the mortar have continued to fire for the "Target Light", as well as adjusting for the commanded indirect "Line" target?

Seems strange to me and should probably be changed to not allow requests to be given to on-board artillery if they already have an active target command.

Any thoughts from somebody else?

[c3k]

Cool.

Thanks for the report...

Ken

[Mad Mike]

Hi Ken,

thanks for looking at this.

I prepared a small test scenario and found the answer to one of my questions.

If the mortar already has a target command (area fire) and you give it another target via the support request interface, it will keep firing at its original target until it confirms the fire mission request to the spotter. At this point, the target command will be deleted automatically and the mortar will start spotting for the new fire mission request. I think this is a quite good behaviour.

The only thing which remains is the "Cease Fire" when using "Clear Target". I don't think this should happen.

Also, an improvement for the support request interface for on-board artillery would be a kind of status message making the player aware that the particular asset is already firing at something via a direct "Target" command. This would avoid confusion regarding the status of the selected asset.

Cheers,

Mad Mike